Twilight Language

The twilight language explores hidden meanings and synchromystic connections via onomatology (study of names) and toponymy (study of place names). This blog further investigates "name games" and "number coincidences" found in news and history. Examinations are also found in my book The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Friday, February 16, 2018

This is the specific building of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that came under attack. The community has decided to tear down the building.

"Sometimes, in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark." ~ Minority Report

Seventeen fatalities.

Alyssa Alhadeff, 14

Scott Beigel, 35

Martin Duque, 14

Nicholas Dworet, 17

Aaron Feis, 37

Jaime Guttenberg, 14

Chris Hixon, 49

Luke Hoyer, 15

Cara Loughran, 14

Gina Montalto, 14

Joaquin Oliver, 17

Alaina Petty, 14

Meadow Pollack, 18

Helena Ramsay, 17

Alex Schachter, 14

Carmen Schentrup, 16

Peter Wang, 15

Victims/Names

GuttenbergGerman and Jewish (Ashkenazic): habitational name from any of various places, for example in Bavaria, called Guttenberg, from the weak dative case (originally used after a preposition and article) of Old High German guot ‘good’ + berg ‘mountain’, ‘hill’. The shortening of the vowel in the first syllable is a feature found in various dialects of German. Jewish (Ashkenazic): ornamental name composed of German gut ‘good’ + Berg ‘mountain’, ‘hill’.

Hixon
English surname Hixon means "son of Hick". Hick was a pet name for Richard. The Germanic first or given name Richard derives from German, French, and English "ric" (ruler, leader, king, powerful) and "hard" (strong, brave, hardy), and it therefore means "strong in rule."

Nicholas = English and Dutch: from the personal name (Greek Nikolaos, from nikān "to conquer" + laos "people"). Forms with -ch- are due to hypercorrection.

Comment maker M.R. passes this along (with additions by me):

- Hixon, the surname of one of the victims, has another association with death: It's the name of a town in England famous for a rail crash [January 6, 1968] with 11 deaths and 45 people injured.- Schachter [from Yiddish (Ashkenazic) shochet, "to slaughter"],the surname of another victim, is the same as the surname of psychologist Stanley Schachter, whose most famous book is When Prophecy Fails*... intriguing.

*When Prophecy Fails, 1964, was a study of a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers that believed in an imminent apocalypse and its coping mechanisms after the event did not occur.

- The names of the victims also seem to point to the movie Jeremiah Johnson [1972]. It was directed by Sydney Pollack**, and Pollack*** is the surname of a victim, and the name of the actor that played the main Indian character was Joaquin Martinez, and both Joaquin and Martin are first names of victims.

**Sydney Pollack was born in Lafayette, Indiana (see Fayette Factor), to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. As an Ashkenazic name, the reference is to a person of Hebrew origin from Poland or from some other Slavonic speaking region.

***Meadow Pollack was buried at the Star of David Memorial Gardens on Friday, February 16, 2018.

In one anti-Semitic tirade, Cruz referenced his biological mother, saying: “My real mom was a Jew. I am glad I never met her,” CNN said.

Dollar Store, Uber, Walmart, Subway, and McDonalds.

Nikolas Cruz's journey on Valentine's Day, to and from the Parkland high school killing of 17 individuals, sounds like someone was connecting the dots to a bunch of Super Bowl commercials. But it merely is as commonplace as the nature of school shootings in 2018.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters that the suspected shooter, 19-year-old (former Parkland student and Dollar Store employee) Nikolas Cruz, arrived at Marjory (Stoneman) Douglas High School via Uber at 2:19pm local time (Eastern) on Wednesday (February 14, 2018). The Uber driver is not implicated at this time, the sheriff said.
From there, the former Marjory Douglas student entered the building, carrying a legally purchased AR-15 rifle and multiple magazines. He began spraying bullets into nearby classrooms, occasionally returning to certain rooms to hit them again.
In total, police say Mr Cruz killed 17 students and staff and injured 14.
Less than 40 minutes after he began his rampage, Mr Israel said, Mr Cruz dropped his rifle and backpack and fled the school on foot, blending in with the students running for their lives from the building.
The suspect entered a Subway inside a Walmart nearby and purchased a drink, Mr Israel said. He then went to a McDonalds and sat for several minutes. He was eventually detained in a residential area two miles from the school at 3:41pm (Eastern). Source.

As it happens, the logo of the Philadelphia Eagles, who won the Super Bowl LII, is a mirror of the Eagles logo of the Parkland high school.

"The falling eagle snych is uncanny, not just the eagle logo of the school with the Philly Eagles, but the fact that it is in both cases a diving/falling eagle. Also the synch can be taken further, with the whole 'lost Israel' thing [see below]. Israel lost an f-16 eagle fighter jet returning from a mission over Syria (in response to an Iranian drone sent over Israel via Syria). This happened just last week (Feb 10, 2018). It is the first time Israel has lost a fighter jet in nearly 36 years! (Last time was in 1982 during the Lebanon War.) In other words Israel lost an eagle 'that fell out of the sky,' so to speak, (it crashed in Israel, and the pilots survived, they ejected). A falling eagle. A very very rare military incident for Israel, that has changed the strategic dynamics between Israel and the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis, as tensions continue to mount and with it fears of war." - From comment maker Lawrence.

"Synchromysticism: The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." ~ Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Order, August 18, 2006.

There are so many syncs with this event, it appears to be filled with Jungian coincidences on steroids.

Parkland Syncs

The location of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is Parkland, Florida.

The immediate stream-of-consciousness association of Parkland is to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, where John F. Kennedy was taken after he was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

The JFK assassination surfaces again as another sync due to the name of the Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz. This one was about Ted Cruz and JFK.

The National Enquirer, a tabloid with a tabloid mentality, published on May 2, 2016, a "World Exclusive Investigation," in which they tied a famed incident running up to the John F. Kennedy assassination to Ted Cruz. The claim is that Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, was photographed with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets. The Trump campaign repeated the claim, as if it was true. (See more here.)

“It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' shooters don't even know! Don't you get it?” ~ David Ferrie (character) in JFK, 1991, Oliver Stone, Director.

More Cruz Syncs

On February 14, 2018, the day that Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 people at the Stoneman Douglas High School, a regularly scheduled rerun of NYPD Blue occurred. It was called "Lost Israel."

The Parkland, Florida, shooting involved an outspoken Jewish law enforcement individual, Sheriff Scott Israel, as the spokesperson concerning the deaths and arrest of Cruz.

"The Parkland shooting itself has a further Israel connection, aside from the police chief Scott Israel. That is Parkland has a sizeable Jewish population. Five of the seventeen dead in this Valentine Day massacre are Jewish (four students and one teacher), which as far as a I know is the highest number of Jewish people killed in a mass shooting tragedy in the USA." ~ Lawrence.

As mentioned in my earlier essay, Cruz means "cross."

Parkland, Florida. February 14, 2018.

This year's Valentine's Day, February 14, 2018, fell on Ash Wednesday. Several eyewitnesses interviewed on television appeared with an ash cross on their forehead.

Nikolas de Jesus Cruz's Instragram profile photo.

For information on the Parkland shooting (including more name game and NIU anniversary info), see here.

Stoneman = Mason

"David Bowie's last song Valentine's Day was meant to be from the perspective of a school shooter. So days after the 'Star Man' was put into orbit by Tesla we have the 'Stone Man' massacre." ~ Daniel Sale.

"Valentine's Day" is a song by English rock musician David Bowie, the fourth single from his 24th studio album The Next Day. The single was released on August 19, 2013. This was to be David Bowie's last 7 inch single issued from a new album in his lifetime. The lyrics are based on the psychology of a shooter.

There are certain times of year that are routinely more dangerous for our children. What should people be preparing for in the wake of the Parkland shooting?

In my 2004 book, The Copycat Effect, I wrote a subsection entitled the "Significant of Dates," and began with the example of St. Valentine's Day, February 14th, (page 246):

Dates are important, anniversary events especially so. Suicides, murder-suicides, murders tend to clump around dates of loss for at-risk victims.One such date is one that most people assume should be associated with happy feelings, but it is not. That is Valentine’s Day. For many people, it’s a day that speaks more to emptiness and loss than to joy and love.

When I wrote Suicide Clusters (NY: Faber & Faber, 1987), I mentioned the spike in suicides around Valentine's Day. From interviews I conducted, the date tended to not remind people of all the people they loved, but, among suicidal individuals, how alone they were. Simply put, people felt suicidal around February 14th. In this modern era of violence, that translates into also feeling homicidal.

The suicide clusters of the early 1980s were replaced by school shootings, as you know from the wall-to-wall coverage, first in a trickle in the mid-1980s, through the mid-1990s, followed by the tsunami of Columbine (1999) and beyond.

Ten years ago, in 2008, after school shootings in Memphis (February 4), Baton Rouge (February 8), Memphis again (February 11), and Oxnard (February 12), a mass shooting occurred at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, Illinois, leaving 6 dead (5 at the college and the shooter through suicide) and 21 wounded on February 14, Valentine’s Day, 2008.

The Parkland school shooting occurred on the 10th anniversary of that mass shooting of February 14, 2008, happening at Cole Hall, Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois. Steven Kazmierczak opened fire with a shotgun and three pistols into a crowd of students on campus, killing five students and injuring an additional 17 people, before fatally shooting himself.

A school shooting of February 19, 2010, revisited DeKalb, Illinois. Soon after NIU marked the 2nd anniversary of the mass shooting that claimed the lives of six, 24-year-old NIU student Brian Mulder was shot by fellow student 22-year-old Zachary R. Isaacman, who survived.

But this time of year has been a dangerous one for years. There was a school shooting on February 19, 1987, with two dead. At the Bethel (Alaska) Regional High School shooting, 16-year-old student Evan Ramsey killed principal Ron Edwards, and 15-year-old star student athlete Joshua Palacios. He also wounded two other students.

School shootings go back over a hundred years. These deadly events occurred on February 14, 1883 (Florence, Nebraska) and February 14, 1920 (Durant, Oklahoma). There was a school shooting on February 16, 1912, at LaGrange, New York, at the Sprout Creek School House, when 14-year-old May McQuade was killed by classmate Raymond B. Carroll, also 14. (This is part of the Fayette Factor for LaGrange is the French home of Lafayette.)

School shootings cluster and build momentum. This can be seen in Februarys and give indication that the copycat effect is taking place. For Februarys, you will find the data shows in 1978 (February 9, February 22); in 1996 (February 2, February 29); in 1997 (February 19); in 2004 (February 2, February 9); in 2005 (February 8); in 2008 (February 4, February 8, February 11, February 12, February 14); in 2010 (February 5, February 12, February 19, February 23); in 2014 (February 10, February 10, February 12, February 22); in 2015 (February 4, February 14, February 23); in 2016 (February 9, February 12, February 29); and in 2017 (February 1, February 4, February 14).

If past modern trends continue, please be alert and aware that a winter (February) cluster of school shootings is followed by an infrequent but large school shooting in April, especially during the "dangerous red zone" of late April.

Ponder which dates of the month have turned into anniversaries for certain towns and cities:

April 12, 1994 - Butte, Montana - 1 killed

April 12, 2013 - Dublin, Virginia - 2 wounded

April 13, 2015 - Goldsboro, North Carolina - 1 killed

April 14, 2003 - New Orleans, Louisiana - 1 killed, 3 wounded

April 15, 1993 - Acushnet, Massachusetts - 1 killed

April 16, 1987 - Detroit, Michigan - 1 killed, 2 wounded

April 16, 1999 - Notus, Idaho - mild injuries

April 16, 2007 - Blacksburg, Virginia - 33 killed, 23 wounded

April 16, 2013 - Grambling, Virginia - 3 wounded

April 16, 2015 - Paradis, Louisiana - 1 wounded

April 18, 2013 - Cambridge, Massachusetts - 2 killed, 1 wounded

April 20, 1999 - Columbine, Colorado - 15 killed, 21 injured

April 21, 1994 - Nashville, Tennessee - 1 killed

April 23, 1991 - Compton, California - 1 killed

April 23, 2016 - Antigo, Wisconsin - 1 killed, 2 wounded

April 24, 1998 - Edinboro, Pennsylvania - 1 killed, 3 wounded

April 24, 2003 - Red Lion, Pennsylvania - 2 killed

April 26, 2009 - Hampton, Virginia - 3 wounded

April 27, 2015 - Lacey, Washington - no injuries

April 29, 1986 - Senath, Missouri - 1 killed

Modern school shootings have, therefore, clustered historically during Aprils in 2015 (April 13, April 16, and April 27); in 2014 (April 9 and April 11); in 2013 (April 12, April 16, April 18); in 2003 (April 14, April 24); in 1999 (April 16, April 20); and in 1994 (April 12, April 21).

April will be a dangerous time for mass shootings and other violent events. Needless to say, there are going to be school incidents, workplace violence, and probably mall & movie situations between now and April 2018. But there is something in the psyche of the suicidal-homicidal individuals who conduct school shootings linked to February and April.

Recall that April is a flashpoint for more than America. The W. R. Myers High School shooting was a school shooting that occurred on April 28, 1999, at W. R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, Canada. The gunman, 14-year-old Todd Cameron Smith, walked into his school and began firing at three students in a hallway, killing one student and wounding another student. This shooting was a direct copycat of the Columbine event of eight days before.

In 2009, on April 10, at a vocational college in Athens, Greece, one was killed in a shooting, and on April 28, at an elementary school in Harstad, Norway, no one was injured in the first Norwegian school shooting. On April 7, 2011, A 23-year-old former student fatally shot 12 people inside a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, school and died by suicide after being shot down by a policeman. In 2015, at a school in Barcelona, Spain, on April 20, a 13-year-old boy armed with a crossbow and a machete killed a teacher and injured 4.

The face of evil.

April 20, 2018, will be the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting and the 129th anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler, who then killed himself on April 30, 1945. April 26th is Hitler's right hand man, Rudolf Hess's birthday and the anniversary of the Erfurt, Germany school shooting in 2002, when Robert Steinhäuser killed 16 and then himself.

It does get personal. Pictured is my maternal grandmother, Nellie Gray, who died at the hands of her estranged second husband, in a murder-suicide on Valentine's Day, 1940.

Murder and suicide are two sides of the same coin played out in going postal, workplace violence, shooting spree, and school shooting incidents, which are impacted by the copycat effect.Being forewarned and aware is half the battle. Vulnerable, suicidal, homicidal youth need help and attention, long before it gets to the stage where they feel there's no turning back. Keep talking, take care, get people help, and remain alert, with your guard up.A few bloggers may wish to demean the predictive insights of known patterns, but ridicule does not overwhelm the reality of history.

+++

"Killers often pick special dates for their attack," April 17, 2009 by Trish Crawford, in Toronto Star

...Loren Coleman is worried, because mass killers often choose special dates and anniversaries for their carnage. The killers at Columbine did, by picking the birthday of one of history's monsters.The author of The Copycat Effect (Simon & Schuster) says the amount of attention this anniversary gets may determine whether any other disaffected males bent on vengeance pick April 20 for their act of destruction."Anniversaries can be dangerous," Coleman says. "These individuals compete with each other."...Coleman called schools "a fish bowl setting with a vulnerable population."...The killers are uniformly "homicidal, suicidal, sexually dysfunctional males" who feel powerless and blame others for their problems. Attacking school students – young girls are favored targets – makes these people feel powerful and strong, Coleman says.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

There has been a Valentine's Day school shooting on February 14, 2018.

10th Anniversary

This latest school shooting occurred on the 10th anniversary of the Northern Illinois University shooting, which was a school shooting that took place on February 14, 2008, at Cole Hall, Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Steven Kazmierczak opened fire with a shotgun and three pistols in a crowd of students on campus, killing five students and injuring an additional 17 people, before fatally shooting himself. (See also, 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

On February 14, 2018, at approximately 2:20 p.m. EST, a shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. There is a report that the shooting occurred concurrently or soon after a fire drill. At least 20 people were reportedly injured, with fatalities. Some of these include teachers, apparently.

By the end of the day, seventeen students and teachers were said to have died in the attack.

The shooter has been arrested. His name was first reported to be Nicolas Cruz, 19, a former student at the Parkland high school. He was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He was said to have watched YouTube videos yesterday on how to make a bomb.

Late on Wednesday, the correct name was said to be Nikolas de Jesus Cruz.

I wanted to add a couple of candidates to the Names of Power list – which I’ve probably mentioned before: that would be Nicholas and permutations (from Old Nick and Santa Claus up), and U.S. presidential names.

Nicholas does have some interesting connections:

Nicholas = English and Dutch: from the personal name (Greek Nikolaos, from nikān "to conquer" + laos "people"). Forms with -ch- are due to hypercorrection. The name in various vernacular forms was popular among Christians throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, largely as a result of the fame of a 4th-century Lycian bishop, about whom a large number of legends grew up, and who was venerated in the Orthodox Church as well as the Catholic. In English-speaking countries, this surname is also found as an Americanized form of various Greek surnames such as Papanikolaou "(son of) Nicholasthe priest" and patronymics such as Nikolopoulos.

For years, Brandon has noted the Nicholas/Nicolas/Nick name game. For example, in 2012, he wrote:

I suppose y’all noticed that the successful walk over Niagara Falls brought a hot name-of-power into play, in this case Nervous Nick, which seems to be running a close second to Fateful Fay these days.

Cruz is a surname of Iberian origin, first found in Castile, Spain, but later spread throughout the territories of the former Spanish and Portuguese Empires. In Spanish and Portuguese, the word cruz means "cross," either the Christian cross or the figure of transecting lines or ways.

Jesus is the English form of Ιησους (Iesous), which was the Greek form of the Aramaic name יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshu'a). Yeshu'a is itself a contracted form of Yehoshu'a. Yeshua ben Yoseph, better known as Jesus Christ, was the central figure of the New Testament and the source of the Christian religion. The four gospels state that he was the son of God and the Virgin Mary who fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. He preached for three years before being crucified in Jerusalem.

The School

The school day at Stoneman Douglas High School ends a 2:40 p.m., according to the school's website. The first tweet from the Broward Sheriff's Office about reports of the shooting came at 2:53 p.m. ET.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was named after the Everglades environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The school opened in 1990 with students in grades 9 though 11, most of whom transferred from nearby schools Coral Springs High School and J. P. Taravella High School. The first senior class graduated in 1992.

About 2,000 students are enrolled at Stoneman Douglas High School.

Parkland is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States, where zoning laws are designed to protect the "park-like" character of the city. Initially, there were no stores or traffic lights in Parkland, though this began to change in the mid 1990s and early 2000s with the additions of large neighborhood developments like Heron Bay and Parkland Isles. As of the 2010 census, the population of Parkland was 23,962. Parkland is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,012,331 people in 2015.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Bruce McArthur, who is charged with five counts of murder and is alleged to have hidden some victims' remains in planters around Toronto, served as Santa Claus at Agincourt Mall in the Scarborough, Ontario neighborhood of the city.

Arrested in January, Toronto police said on February 8, 2018, they’ve recovered the remains of at least six people from planters on a property connected to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur.

The remains found on property McArthur used as storage in exchange for doing the landscaping, included some from one of the five men McArthur is already charged with killing, Andrew Kinsman.

McArthur was arrested Jan. 18 and charged with two counts of murder in connection with the disappearances of Kinsman and Selim Esen, two men last seen in what the media terms the “Gay Village” district of Toronto. Not long after that, he was charged with the murders of three more men and police said they were on a wide search for other possible victims. The suspected serial killer was a mall Santa.

The news of McArthur's time as a "mall Santa" brought forth memories of John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994).

McArthur "was hired through an event management company who provides various forms of entertainers including Santa to many events throughout the (Greater Toronto area)," a statement from the mall said.

Thomas Donald Bruce McArthur (b. October 8, 1951) is an alleged Canadian serial killer. As of February 2018 the self-employed landscaper is charged with five counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of missing men from Church and Wellesley, Toronto's gay village.

Police have found human remains of several men in private gardens, where McArthur has worked as a landscape gardener. So far, the investigation has shown that he found many of his alleged victims through online dating apps for men who have sex with men, stating that he wanted to meet submissive men. His alleged victims were predominantly gay men of South Asian or Middle Eastern origin.

McArthur was first charged on 18 January 2018 with the murder of 49-year-old Andrew Kinsman and presumed death of 44-year-old Selim Esen. Both men went missing in 2017. On 29 January 2018, Toronto police laid three more first-degree murder charges against McArthur related to the disappearances of Majeed Kayhan, 58, and Soroush Mahmudi, 50, as well as the death of Dean Lisowick, 43-44, who had never been reported missing.

On February 8, 2018, the Toronto police recovered the remains of at least six people at a home on Mallory Crescent, where McArthur stored some of his landscaping equipment. At least some of the remains have been identified as belonging to Andrew Kinsman. Human remains were also found in planters at a Leaside home. Police believe there are more victims. Police said they were combing through five properties, four in Toronto, one in Madoc, all related to McArthur. Source.

The name McArthur is Scottish. It is an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Artair, a patronymic from the Gaelic form of the personal name Arthur. The name Arthur is an English name, from the Roman clan name Artorius, meaning "noble, courageous."

Artorius is thought by some to have a purely Latin derivation, translating the name as "plowman." Such an etymology seems unlikely as the Latin word for "plowman" was arātor, not *artor (in fact a gentilic name potentially derived from arātor, Arātrius [also an epithet of Jupiter], is attested in inscriptions from Aquileia, Altinum, Pola, and Montefalcone; compare, too the word arātōrius "fit for ploughing," used of oxen and fields).

"Gay Village's" Unsolved Serial Killer Cases

There is some speculation that Bruce McArthur alleged serial killing activity could have started in the 1970s, and old cases are being investigated. The following was published as an overview of those unsolved files, as they are similar to Toronto's current killings.

Feb. 18, 1975: Police attended the apartment of Arthur Harold Walkley, 52, in response to a 911 call at 3:50 a.m. that day. His roommate discovered his naked body, stabbed several times in the back and chest, though no knife was ever recovered by police. His wallets and credit cards were stolen during the attack on Borden St. near Bloor St. W. Walkley, a part-time University of Toronto lecturer, died shortly after arriving in hospital. Dec. 20, 1975: Frederick John Fontaine was 32 when he died. Fontaine was found in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern, a former bar with a landmark clock tower, popular in the early days of Toronto’s Gay Village. Officers attended the scene about 9 p.m., and found the CBC technician suffering from blunt force trauma. He died several months later in hospital, on July 15, 1976. Feb. 11, 1976: Forty-two-year-old painter and decorator James Douglas Taylor was found beaten with a baseball bat in his North York apartment near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave. He was also robbed. Neighbours told police at the time that a pickup truck was seen at the house, where he lived alone. Sept. 20, 1976: Police discovered the body of James Stewart Kennedy, a federal income tax employee, at 8 a.m. on a Monday. The 59-year-old was strangled with a bath towel and suffering from blunt force trauma in his Jarvis St. apartment. He was dead by the time police arrived. Jan. 25, 1977: Described in some media coverage as “shy and new on the gay scene,” 25-year-old Brian Dana Latocki, a financial bank analyst, was found tied to a bed in his apartment, strangled, and stabbed to death. Police responded to the scene on Erskine Ave., near Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Eglinton Ave. E., at 9:40 a.m. that day. The night before he was killed, he was last seen leaving the St. Charles Tavern. Sept. 20, 1978: Perhaps one of the most high-profile deaths was of club owner Alexander “Sandy” Romeo LeBlanc, 29. He was found at 7:20 p.m., stabbed more than 100 times from head to foot. “As police walked around the body, the carpet squished from the sound of absorbed blood, and bloody footprints led to an open window,” Robin Hardy wrote in 1979. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, LeBlanc was pronounced dead in his apartment on St. Joseph St.Nov. 28, 1978: Just after 2 p.m. that day, police responded to a “check address” call for a resident near Bathurst St. and St. Clair Ave. Inside an apartment, they found William Duncan Robinson, 25, dead from stab wounds. His sister made the call to police after he didn’t show up to work for two days. At the time, police believed he may have gone to a gay bar in the Yonge and College Sts. area, and returned home with the killer. A neighbour reported hearing a “strange hollow sound” coming from his apartment. Source.

Monday, February 12, 2018

On February 10, 2018, at 3:33 pm in McKenzie Branch, Kentucky, the Johnson County Sheriff's Department was called to a home. Arriving there, the deputies found two people dead in the kitchen, killed by gunshot wounds.

A witness said the suspect, named Joseph Nickell (photo above), had fled in a black Toyota Camry.

A search was begun, involving the Kentucky State Police and the Paintsville Police Department. Due to a tip, the law enforcement officers went to a Mill Street house in Paintsville, Kentucky, about 10 miles south of the first site. At that home, the police found three bodies, one of which was Joseph Nickell. The victims have been identified as Nickell’s parents, James and Arlene Nickell, who were killed in McKenzie Branch, located near Flatgap, Kentucky. Those killed in Paintsville have been named as Lindsey Vanhoose and her mother, Patricia Vanhoose. Source.

Nickell identified himself as a cosmetologist and hair stylist. Nickell’s sister, Rebekah, died in August 2017. According to her Facebook page, Rebekah Nickell had been working as a marriage and family counsellor at the Faith Counseling Center in Betsy Layne, Kentucky. Rebekah attended Lindsey Wilson College and Liberty University. Like her brother, Rebekah was a native of Paintsville. Nickell's girlfriend, Lindsey Vanhoose had been accused of pushing Rebekah down the stairs the day before her death. The following day, after complaining of a headache, Rebekah died after taking a nap. No autopsy was ever done as Nickell’s mother had Rebekah “buried immediately.” Source.

Joseph Nickell (the shooter, on the right) and his son, Joseph Nickell, on the left, who was not involved in the murder-suicide.

Kentucky and Nickells
The name Nickell is based on the given name Nicholas. Nicholas derives from the Greek Nikolaos, which is made up of the words nikan, meaning "to conquer," and laos, meaning "people."

The Nickell family under discussion apparently has ancestors from Ireland.

I happen to know another "Joseph Nickell," whose live entwines with nearby Liberty, Kentucky. Kentucky appears to be Nickell territory. It is a small world.

Nickell's biography notes that he was born in Liberty, Kentucky, on December 1, 1944, and grew up there. He received his B.A.(1967), M.A.(1982), and Ph.D.(1987) degrees from the University of Kentucky. Nowadays, Joe Nickell lives in the Buffalo-Amherst, New York area.

Joe Nickell's parents were significant community members of Morgan County, Kentucky. His mother, Ella Kathleen, was a bookkeeper and high school valedictorian, and his father, Joe Wendell Nickell, a postmaster and amateur magician. Several genealogy and local history books were written and published by Ella and Wendell Nickell.

I have worked closely with this modern edition of Joe Nickell (pictured on the right), and despite supposedly being from opposite sides of the spectrum in cryptozoology and unexplained investigations, we have mutual respect. Nickell wrote a column about our relationship on the CSI (now CI) website, April 12, 2011, entitled "Well Met: Loren Coleman."

While talking to Nickell (as well as coincidentally once in Nova Scotia with UFO author/researcher Stan Friedman), I discovered Nickell-Friedman-myself had overlapping histories regarding the Vietnam era draft, adoptions, and our children. Nickell has captured some of this in his biography published variously, online:

In late 2003, Nickell reconnected with his college girlfriend, Diana G. Harris, and learned he had a daughter, Cherette, and two grandsons, Tyner and Chase. Harris and Nickell married in Springfield, Illinois on April 1, 2006. Harris has assisted Nickell in his investigative work. Cherette had always been told that her biological father was her mother's first husband, although she questioned the lack of family resemblance. On her wedding day, one of the guests mentioned that her parents weren't married when she was conceived. Later Cherette asked her mother about her father and sensed an equivocation in the answer. More conversations with her mother and a DNA test proved that Nickell was her father. Nickell used his daughter's claim that her search was the result of an intuition as the basis for an article on the unconscious collection and processing of data. Nickell concluded, "Cautions notwithstanding, I must admit to a new appreciation of intuition, without which I would not have known of my wonderful daughter--and two grandsons."

How Joe Nickell, the CSI writer, is related to Joseph Nickell, the gunman, is unknown. But the Nickell's Name Game is alive in Kentucky, that's for sure. My intuition tells me so.

Thursday, February 08, 2018

An important Black Lives Matter activist from Charleston, South Carolina, who gained prominence in the wake of the police shooting of Walter Scott and when he grabbed a Confederate flag from a protester, was shot and killed February 6, 2018, in New Orleans. Muhiyidin Elamin Moye, who went by Muhiyidin d'Baha, 32, was found dead Tuesday morning after being shot in the thigh while riding his bicycle on Bienville Street. Rushed to a local hospital, he later died there of his wounds. No suspects are in custody.

Muhiyidin Elamin Moye/d'Baha made national headlines in February 2017 when he took a flying leap to wrestle a large Confederate battle flag from a protester in South Carolina, and the event was captured on video.

That incident occurred at an event at the College of Charleston, where activist Bree Newsome - known herself for climbing a flagpole to remove a Confederate flag at the statehouse in Columbia, S.C. - was speaking.

Moye/d'Baha was originally from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and moved with his family to South Carolina when he was 13.

Commentator Anita Ladaprarez notes that "between this death and the extremely suspicious deaths of prominent activists and their relations in St. Louis, it seems very dangerous to be the more camera-eager kind of black activist."

Wednesday, February 07, 2018

A name in the news: Josh McDaniels. Joshua Thomas McDaniels (born April 22, 1976) is an American football coach who is the offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). The Patriots lost Super Bowl LII. On February 6, 2018, McDaniels was announced as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. However, the same day McDaniels withdrew from the position and announced that he had decided to stay with the Patriots.

Ten years previously, on June 2, 2008, Bo Diddley, the famed American singer, guitarist, songwriter and music producer, died. It was widely reported his name was Ellas McDaniel. Born on December 30, 1928, in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates, he was adopted and raised by his mother's cousin, Gussie McDaniel, whose surname he assumed. In 1934, the McDaniel family moved to the South Side of Chicago, where he dropped the Otha and became Ellas McDaniel. His music has been claimed to have created a powerful sense of voodoo sex magic. This was demonstrated most overtly when he joined the Rolling Stones on their 1994 concert broadcast of Voodoo Lounge, performing "Who Do You Love?". (h/t Johnny Walsh.)

The weekend of Saturday May 5th and Sunday May 6th ranks as one of those anniversaries that creeps into our consciousness, as it is mainly recalled as the peak date of the Enfield Monster mania. It was on May 6, 1973, that Henry McDaniel, for the second and last time, saw the thing that haunted the southern Illinois town of Enfield.

I was reminded of this recently by an old MacArthur High School classmate Dave Wooten, who only lately discovered I was the guy behind the initial investigations of that melodrama in southern Illinois. That he had some personal and physical links to the memories of the events back then surprised me. It is a small world.

Dave wrote: “Do you know I was there and didn’t know you were ‘on the case’! My uncle Cash Wooten was for a time game warden and county commissioner [there]. Cousin Ron Wooten is now commissioner. My grandpa Garwood lived in Enfield, just up from the tracks. I remember my aunt would not leave her windows open at night!”

The Enfield Monster period was during the time of “High Strangeness” sweeping the USA in the 1970s. At the time, I was an anthropology student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, but had moved back to central Illinois again, taking anthropology/zoology courses at the University of Illinois. Naturally, when reports of an unknown creature was registered deeper in the bottomlands at the other end of the state, I traveled there to investigate.

The facts of the case are well-known. On April 25, 1973, Mr. and Mrs. Henry McDaniel returned to their home and Henry had an encounter with a thing that looked like it had three legs, two pink eyes as big as flashlights, and short arms on a four-and-a-half-feet tall and grayish-colored body, along the L&N railroad tracks, in front of his house.

A young man, Greg Garrett, had the incredible distinction of having his tennis shoe covered foot stepped on by the sort of kangaroo-like, apelike thing. I was there, soon afterward, in that May of 1973, and interviewed various principals.

The Enfield Horror

Illinois investigator Troy Taylor, years later, would rename it the Enfield Horror and summarize, online, what happened next, this way:

On May 6, Henry McDaniel was awakened in the middle of the night by howling neighborhood dogs. He looked out his front door and saw the monster again. It was standing out near the railroad tracks. “I didn’t shoot at it or anything,” McDaniel reported. “It started on down the railroad track. It wasn’t in a hurry or anything.”
McDaniel’s reports soon brought publicity to Enfield and prompted the threats from the county sheriff, but it was too late. Soon, hordes of curiosity-seekers, reporters and researchers descended on the town. Among the “monster hunters” were five young men who were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Jim Clark as “threats to public safety” and for hunting violations. This was after they had opened fire on a gray, hairy thing that they had seen in some underbrush on May 8. Two of the men thought they had hit it, but it sped off, moving faster than a man could.
One more credible witness to the monster was Rick Rainbow, who was then the news director of radio station WWKI in Kokomo, Indiana. He and three other persons spotted the monster near an abandoned house, just a short distance from McDaniel’s place. They didn’t get much of a look at it as it was running away from them, but they later described it as about five feet tall, gray and stooped over. Rainbow did manage to tape record its cry. The wailing was also heard by eminent researcher Loren Coleman, who also came to try and track down the creature. He also heard the sound while searching an area near the McDaniel home. ~ in The Enfield Horror: The Strangest Monster Sighting in Illinois.

I did travel to Enfield in 1973, with Fortean investigator Richard Crowe and a friend of his. We searched fields, farms, and railroad tracks. We talked to many locals.

I interviewed the witnesses, examined at the siding and air conditioner damage on the McDaniel house, heard some strange screeching banshee-like sounds, took photographs, and walked away bewildered.

I wrote up my notes on the accounts for articles like “Swamp Slobs Invade Illinois” in Fate Magazine, July 1974, and in my subsequent books.

But time moves on, and new details have emerged.

Dave Wooten’s 80 year old aunt was still alive a couple years ago, when he asked her, “Where is Greg Garrett these days?”

She answered: “Greg Garrett is dead.”

As it turns out, Garrett was killed when he was shot in the back by his wife, as he was sitting on his front porch in Enfield, Illinois, several years ago. Garrett’s wife was later acquitted of any homicide charges, as her “self-defense” arguments held up in court.

Wooten did some more checking. He talked to Bob Duckworth, the White County Sheriff at the time, and verified that Garrett was the kid that saw the Enfield monster, which also McDaniel reported seeing. Duckworth said that indeed Garrett was killed by his wife Rosie over 25 years ago.

The Name Game

Greg Garrett died violently, pierced in the back by gunfire, apparently. The name Garrett, in English, means "rules by the spear" or "hard or bold spear." American and Norse meanings for the name equal the notion "defender." In Teutonic, the meaning of the name Garrett is "spear strength." Greg means "on the watch" and "watchful." It appears that Greg Garrett, who once avoided the force of the attack of the Enfield Monster, exhibited behaviors leading to revenge from behind. He had let his guard down, it would seem.

The family name McDaniel would be highlighted two years after the Illinois incidents in John A. Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies. The McDaniels would be one of the focal points of the Mothman stories, as you may recall. Within the context of my 1983 book, Mysterious America, I pointed out in the name game chapter the two McDaniel threads from Enfield, Illinois, and Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Let me share some of those passages with you here.

McDaniel, of course, is a name familiar for its Mothman links.

This reminds me of my exchange with [John A.] Keel about the name game in 1973, when we were discussing the new reports out of Illinois, from Enfield. On April 25, 1973, Mr. and Mrs. Henry McDaniel returned to their home and Henry had an encounter with a thing that looked like it had three legs, two pink eyes as big as flashlights, and short arms on a four-and-a-half-feet tall and grayish-colored body, along the L&N rail-road tracks, in front of his house. I traveled to Enfield....
John Keel wondered aloud with me about these reports, as he had returned from Point Pleasant well aware of the vortex the McDaniel family had found themselves in. One of the first Mothman witnesses, Linda Scarberry, was, after all, a McDaniel. Her mother saw Mothman. The McDaniel home was the focus of MIBs, telephone troubles, and poltergeist activity, thus involving Parke McDaniel and Mabel McDaniel with the Mothman flap.
Keel had uncovered a 1870s story of an individual named McDaniel who had met up with the Devil in New York State’s Catskill Mountains. Western Bigfoot Society member Vic McDaniel led expedition members to where he had found a Sasquatch bed in August 1979. As the 20th century ended, Stanley V. McDaniel, a philosophy professor and member of the Society for Planetary SETI Research, began to make a name for himself, to turn a phrase, when he produced The McDaniel Report, and a book, The Case for the Face, on his research into the possibility of artificial objects on the surface of Mars. ~ Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (NY: Paraview, 2002)

John Keel discussed the 1966-1967 Mothman-McDaniel family troubles further:

The McDaniel family had been living in the twilight zone ever since their daughter and the others had first glimpsed “Mothman.” Linda had repeatedly heard the sound “of a speeded-up phonograph record” around her own home after the incident, and peculiar manifestations indicating the presence of a poltergeist began. Finally she and Roger moved into the basement apartment in the McDaniel’s home. The poltergeist followed them. Strange lights appeared in the house, objects moved by themselves, and the heavy odor of cigar smoke was frequently noted. No one in the family smokes. (The smell of cigar smoke is commonly reported in many poltergeist cases throughout the world.) One morning Linda woke up and distinctly saw the shadowy form of a large man in the room. The house was searched. All the doors were still locked. There was no sign of a prowler. The McDaniels’ experience was one of many during the thirteen intense months of the Mothman flap. ~ Strange Creatures from Time and Space (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1970.

I continued a look at this name game...

Mabel McDaniel had seen Mothman on January 11, 1967, near Tiny’s Restaurant in Point Pleasant; then later during March, had a run-in with one of those Mad Gasser/Springheel Jack-type fellows, the Men-In-Black. Parke McDaniel had likewise been frightened by the Men-In-Black on December 23, 1967. Keel felt the name McDaniel had a far greater recurrence in these matters than random….
Keel himself has raised the question of name selectivity in his writings: “Hundreds of thousands of phenomenal events have been described in newspapers, magazines and books, and hundreds of thousands of witnesses have been named in print. When dealing with such a large body of evidence—or population—certain laws of probability should surface. We might expect that more Smiths would see UFOs than anyone else, simply because there are more Smiths around. But, in actuality, the name Smith rarely appears in a UFO report.”
What Keel found was that unusual names were the point of convergence for the phenomena. He saw McDaniel, Reeves/Reaves, Maddox, Heflin, Allen, Hill, and others, as being selected for UFO and related experiences. The Smiths, Browns, Williams, and Johnsons—the four top surnames in America—are not the most frequent precipitant names to crop up. I would add that the most unusually named witnesses seem to have the more bizarre encounters. ~ Mysterious America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2007).

McDaniel has a complex history to find its meaning. It is an altered form of Irish McDonnell "son of Donal," from an incorrect association of the Gaelic patronymic with the personal name Daniel ("God is my judge") - who, in the Bible, is eventually thrown to the lions. McDaniel thus is actually from the Gaelic form of Irish Donal (equivalent to Scottish Donald), and erroneously associated with the Biblical personal name Daniel. Mc means ‘son of’; therefore the surname McDaniel is Scottish in origin and derives from the ancient celtic domno "world" + val "might," "rule."

The Enfield name game is intriguing, as well. In Canada, there is an Enfield, Nova Scotia. American cities named Enfield are found in Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and North Carolina. There is an Enfield in Ireland, and three in Australia. All of these names point back to the original Enfield from England.

Enfield was recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as Enefelde, and as Einefeld in 1214, Enfeld in 1293, and Enfild in 1564: that is "open land of a man called Ēana," or "where lambs are reared," from the Old English feld with an Old English personal name or with Old English ēan "lamb." The feld would have been a reference to an area cleared of trees within woodland later to become Enfield Chase.

"The word Enfield also has a meaning in heraldry, it is a mythical beast having the head of a fox, the chest of a greyhound, the body of a lion, the hindquarters and tail of a wolf, and forelegs like an eagle's talons. The origin of the word in this context is disputed," notes one site.

Within the field of parapsychology, the Enfield Poltergeist was the name given to claims of poltergeist activity at a council house in Brimsdown village, borough of Enfield, England, beginning in August 1977.

Many casual observers of the unexplained may have assumed the Enfield Monster of the USA was a phenomenon reported after the events of the Enfield Poltergeist of the UK, but, in reality, the Illinois sightings predate the English ones by over 4 years.

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About Me

Investigator of human and animal mysteries since 1960. Swamp Thing character "Coleman Wadsworth" in #4:7 and more in #4:8, is a tribute.
Author of over 35 books, including The Unidentified (1975), Mysterious America (1983/2007), Suicide Clusters (1987), Cryptozoology A to Z (1999), Bigfoot! (2003), The Copycat Effect (2004), and field guides.
Educated in anthropology-zoology at SIU-Carbondale, and psychiatric social work at Simmons College School of Social Work. Began doctoral work in anthropology (Brandeis University) and family violence (UNH). Taught at NE universities (1980 to 2003), while concurrently a senior researcher at the Muskie School (1983 to 1996), before retiring to write, lecture, consult, & open museum. Popular documentary course was taught for 23 semesters; appeared on C2C, The Larry King Show, MonsterQuest, Lost Tapes, In Search Of, and other tv programs.
Loren Coleman is a dedicated father (Caleb, Malcolm, Des), cryptozoologist, media consultant, and baseball fan.